Tribulation 99
© N/A
Show Grade: A-
Disc Grade: B+
Reviewed Format: DVD
Rated: Not Rated
Cast: Sean Kikoyne (Narrator)
Writer: Craig Baldwin
Director: Craig Baldwin
Distributor: Other Cinema / Facets
Original Year Of Release: 1992
Extras: English DD 2.0; audio commentary track; bonus shorts; booklet; trailers
Suggested Retail: $24.95
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"Tribulation 99"
By: Brian ThomasReview Date: Sunday, February 25, 2007
Conspiracy theories and claims of the paranormal are natural attractors for kooks. Kooks tend to rant louder and sound crazier than those who are seriously pursuing research into these outré areas. California filmmaker Craig Baldwin knows this all too well, but luckily enough has a sense of humor, and has learned to turn a disadvantage into an advantage while attempting to make a point about US foreign policy.
Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America is Baldwin’s masterpiece of pseudo-documentary, a mad collage of disparate material brought together into a sort of Unified Field Theory of paranoia. Baldwin collects found footage, educational and industrial films, odd reels from feature films, cartoons, trailers, and all sorts of other eclectic visuals, and he uses them to splice together a story of a secret alien infiltration of planet Earth, all of which is plainly revealed by his “evidence”. This comes in the form of the 99 “Tribulations” of the title, a series of world-changing clandestine or officially misdirected events related by the anonymous narrator (Sean Kikoyne) in a husky whisper. Baldwin’s techniques, along with the fact that Tribulation 99 was mainly distributed on home video until now only via bootleg tapes (some of which came direct from Baldwin), helped create an atmosphere of danger around the film, as if the viewer was witnessing forbidden information. Juxtaposed against this is Baldwin’s oversize, tabloid style intertitles, and the nature of the footage he’s assembled. It’s one thing to talk about reports of alien abduction or the latest Kennedy assassination theory, but quite another to do so via clips from cheesy sci-fi movies and social engineering shorts. The disappearance of a public official is mentioned over shots from Warning From Space, while a discussion of the Hollow Earth is relayed along with clips from Inframan and First Spaceship on Venus.
But there’s a conspiracy among the conspiracies. Baldwin’s over-the-top handling of the wildest stories fakes you out while he’s slipping in a sharp little jab. Some of the Tribulations concern how the CIA plotted the overthrow of certain Third World governments – in some cases the same governments they’d previously supported – in order to further the growth of US industry in these nations. Though Baldwin uses the same techniques here (clips from Mexico’s Invisible Man, etc.), he also puts in newsreel footage and government films acquired direct from these Central and South American nations. Fact is camouflaged within fiction, creating irony, comedy, and curiosity. It makes you want to run some web searches and poke around the library to find out more about what the Dulles brothers were up to in Guatemala, how mercenaries have been used by governments to do jobs they’re not allowed to (legally), and whether or not terrorism is a Frankenstein that the USA created and is now trying to hunt down with a mob of angry villagers. Watching Tribulation 99 makes paranoid depression fun again.
On a commentrak, Baldwin tries to keep up with naming his references while riffing through the literature of both political journalism and kookdom. There are signs he may have spent too many long nights poring over the small print of leaflets and tracts – his speech is filled with the “of course”, “everyone knows that” and “it’s common knowledge” of the veteran conspiracyphile as he touches on details that are certainly not “common knowledge”, but that just serves as notice that he’s not just a poseur. For further puzzling evidence, the DVD supplies us with two of Baldwin’s earlier works. “Wild Gunman” from 1978 is an awkward early 20-minute short that critiques cultural imperialism through common western imagery. He shoots himself in the foot by hammering the point too hard. A bit more fun is 1986’s “RocketKitCongoKit”, a 30-minute carnival ride that relates the twin stories of the CIA’s aide in installing a new regime in the 1960s and the development of rocketry, bringing them to a crossroads when President Mobutu gave the German company OTRAG a giant chunk of Zaire to build a rocket launch base. Baldwin brings the story to a climax by documenting the future, in which a missile launched to attack a domestic uprising sparks a thermonuclear war. You might have to recheck that 1986 copyright to assure yourself that it didn’t actually happen.
Whatever one thinks of Baldwin’s politics, the underground influence of his films has been considerable, inspiring artists like Negativeland and the Church of the SubGenius in their media collage forays, with tremors of the Tribulations felt wherever MTV is available.
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